M2K X-Men Unlimited
by Marvel2000Fanfic
Summary: This anthology series allows our M2K writers to publish one and done stories outside of their standard titles. Inside you'll find characters from all corners of the X-Men realm!


This is a double-sized, milestone issue for M2K! Start with this Dazzler story by Steve Crosby, then read on for a story about Cypher and Havok (a prelude to a new M2K title coming soon!). Make sure to check out other tales at our site, .com!

* * *

" **Sounds in the Dark"**

Featuring Dazzler

Written by Steve Crosby

* * *

Even for those almost at the stage, it was nearly impossible to see who was performing. It wasn't just the darkness, but also the crowd of bodies pressed against each other, moving to the music that was everywhere. It was electric, some kind of syntho-pop that was popular in Europe, but Darcy thought it wouldn't have caught on in the United States. The packed hall clearly proved otherwise.

"I can't say I see the appeal!" Darcy shouted to the man with her, Dr. Paul Jansen.

He looked at her and shook his head. "Sorry, I can't hear you over this racket. Honestly, I wouldn't have this on in my car, let alone pay that cover charge. But once I heard she was in town…"

Turning back toward the stage, Paul saw a flicker in the darkness. It was a pulse of light, moving in time to a musical beat that had suddenly dropped in volume. The light became brighter and more frequent, illuminating the young woman singing on stage. She was blonde, of medium height with a slender, athletic build. Her costume was loud and flashy as was common in the profession, with a bright yellow starburst emblem on the chest.

The singer was Alison Blaire, also known as the Dazzler, and in the climax of her show the audience saw why. Now it was the music that was almost impossible to hear, as the light pulsating from Dazzler became almost dangerously bright. Now blinded by the light rather than the dark, the audience roared as the light show ran it's course. It soon faded and the music picked up again, finishing the song and the set.

"How did she do that?" Darcy asked, squinting. "That wasn't coming from any of the lamps I saw."

"Dazzler's full of surprises," Paul said. "Come on, we'll meet her back-stage."

"Are you sure? With this crowd, there's bound to a big beefy bouncer to keep us away."

"Trust me, she'll see us," Paul hoped.

Sure enough, when they worked their way through the crowd to the backstage area, a very large man was there, turning away a spindly young man. Paul caught sight of Alison though and shouted, trying to get her attention. She did notice and caught sight of him, and for a second there was no recognition. Then it came, and Paul saw a flash of emotions that for a second he thought could end with his bodily harm.

Catching on, Darcy said, "I feel I should have asked exactly how you knew this woman."

"That was a long time ago," Paul said. "It'll be fine."

Finally, Dazzler smiled and motioned to the bouncer. "They can go through, Gerry. Good to see you again, Paul."

Allowed through, Paul and Darcy followed Dazzler into what passed for a dressing room. "Good to see you too, Alison. It's been a long time."

"Yeah, not since I went to prison," said Alison with a grin for Darcy. "Hi. Did the two of you enjoy the show?"

"It was…interesting," said Darcy.

There were a few more minutes of small talk. Paul was glad she was still performing. She asked how he found himself in New England. He explained about his new practice and that Darcy was his assistant.

"This isn't entirely a social visit," Paul admitted. "A patient of mine recently died and the circumstances, along with things he'd said, has me worried. The police dismissed my concerns, and when I saw that you were in town…"

Dazzler sighed. "Well, look who's dragging who back into the life. Sorry, Paul, but I'm done with super-criminals and mysterious deaths, and just the general weirdness of my old life." She wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to Paul. "Here, with this code you can download my album for half-price."

"Yeah, if it were free that'd still be too much," said Darcy. "Sorry, but I don't like your music, and I doubt most of the audience did either. The only thing about tonight that was mildly appealing was that fireworks display. How did you do that, by the way?"

When Dazzler realized Darcy was serious with that question, she laughed. "Oh, wow that was refreshing. It's been so long since I've met someone with no idea who I am." Wiping a single tear from her eye, Dazzler considered Paul. "All right. What did the patient say?"

Before Paul could say a word, the door burst open and the spindly man from before rushed in. A knife was in his hand, dark with fresh blood, and he slashed in Paul's directions. "The words are not meant for unbelievers!"

Paul fell to the ground, his hands raised against the attack that had barely missed his face. The slashing continued, barely missing Darcy as she also fell away. Only Dazzler moved forward, grabbing her attacker at the wrist. A twist made him drop the knife, and a kick to the balls made him drop to his knees. A roundhouse to the face dropped him all the way.

"And if that blood is from my friend Gerry you have more coming to you," said Dazzler. In one stride she was at Paul and pulling him to his feet. "We'd better talk on the move. The only thing more annoying than crazy cultists are police questions."

Nearly an hour later Dazzler approached a house, with Dr. Paul Jansen and his assistant Darcy walking behind her. Paul had finally gotten to the point of what was going on.

"Francis said it began after inheriting his granduncle's home. He claimed to always hear scratching noises, but couldn't find the source. Then his paranoia grew, believing he was being followed, that his life was in danger. My colleagues insist the delusions were a product of the insomnia."

"I say it was a classic case of the stupids," said Darcy. "I mean…look at this house!"

Dazzler silently agreed. It being the middle of the night didn't help, but she felt that, even in the bright of day, the house would be cast in ominous shadow. Weeds littered the lawn and beyond, creeping around sections pieces of the broken metal fence. The stairs looked as though they couldn't support the weight of a butterfly, and creaked precariously under Dazzler's feet.

"I know," said Dazzler. "First order of business should have been to knock this down and sell to a developer. This land is on a prime Shwarma location."

"Oh, he was trying to sell even before the reading," said Paul. "But the will stipulated that Francis live in the house for a week. He missed it by a day."

Dazzler shook her head. "Why judges keep upholding those crazy conditions I'll never…well, actually I do know. Clearly the power of the cult lobby knows no limits."

"What I don't know is why we're talking to you," said Darcy. "I mean, sure, you can handle yourself in a fight, but this is something for the cops. And with that attack we had something they couldn't ignore."

"Cops will find any excuse to ignore something when it's weird." Dazzler produced a flashlight that gave off a powerful beam. With a swift kick she had the front door opened. "And Paul knows I'm into the weird stuff."

Except for footprints, most of the floor was covered in dust, as was most of the furniture Dazzler could see. Cobwebs were everywhere. "Yeesh, you'd think he would have taken advantage of the insomnia to clean a little."

Darcy and Paul had taken out their own flashlights. "As I said, he was planning to demolish," Paul said. "But still, this is atrocious."

It began then, the noise. Dazzler's ears picked up the truth, hundreds, perhaps thousands of little scratches and skitterings melded into a long and steady white noise. As she ran the flashlight along the walls and floors of the house, Dazzler noticed something else. Every spot where the light fell, the noise there ceased, though it was hard to notice with the noise from everywhere else.

"You guys should probably leave," Dazzler said. "But I'm going into the basement. I've made a little bet with myself about how much goat's blood is down there."

"There wasn't anything when we explored earlier today," said Paul. "I hoped you would notice something with your…experience, and this noise is certainly new. But I didn't come this far just to get out now."

"I kind of want to see if there's goat's blood too," said Darcy.

Several doors were tried before Dazzler found the basement entrance. Somehow the room was even darker, the beam of light barely penetrating a foot before fading away. She could just see the rickety old wooden stairs, and a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. When Dazzler pulled the chain-switch, nothing happened.

"Of course not." For a few seconds, Dazzler hummed a tune. It soon faded, and the light grew brighter, reaching the basement floor. Yet as Dazzler descended the stairs, the light began to fade again. By the time she reached the bottom steps, the flashlight only illuminated past a few inches. "In my experience, this is very weird."

Almost unseen next to Dazzler, Paul spoke with a tremor in his voice. "Okay. I'm beginning to have second thoughts now."

"Ah!" Darcy jumped, stumbling off the stairs and finding her feet on the ground. "Something brushed my foot!"

Most unsettling was that Darcy's cries were barely heard over the drown of skittering noises.

"Loud sounds and little light," said Dazzler. She handed the flashlight to Darcy. "Here, hold this while I adjust the ratio more to my liking."

"What? Hey, why are you…" Darcy noticed how little the flashlight weighed for it's size, and noticed the end wasn't closed. "There's no batteries here!"

Not only was Darcy's voice fading at that moment. All sound was fading, drawn into Dazzler as a radiance grew around her. Light exploded from Dazzler in all directions, forcing Darcy and Paul Jansen to avert their eyes. Now, with the basement fully illuminated, they could see the cause of the ever-present skittering.

Rats scurried across the basement floor, walls and ceiling. There were hundreds, thousands, all silently running into the room and at the three. But at reaching the light, they screamed for an instant before the noise joined Dazzler and became light. The illumination expanded, washing over the numberless vermin. They broke apart in the light, lingering as motes of dust.

Light flooded the basement, crept up through every nook and cranny of the house. Outside, light burst through all windows and doors. Brighter it became, feeding over the skittering and the screaming. Only when all the rats were consumed did their noise cease, and so too did Dazzler's lightshow.

Feeling the danger had passed, Dazzler withdrew her light so as not to drain her inner reserves. Illuminating only a few feet of the basement, she faced Paul and Darcy.

"Now that is what I call an infestation. Maybe somebody with more know-how could explain what just happened, but I'm satisfied it's been taken care off. Thanks for the vist Paul. It's been fun."

"Yeah, that was… My god, that was…" Paul stuttered, unable to comprehend what he'd just witnessed. Thus far it had simply reminded Paul of why he and Dazzler had broken up. This life, it wasn't for him.

Darcy, on the other hand, regarded Dazzler with awe. "That was…it was incredible. Those things, I could feel the evil. We were going to die, or worse, and you saved us! You're a super-hero."

Dazzler shrugged. "Well, yeah. I've been public for years, minus a few breaks."

"How did you get to be so astounding?" Darcy asked. "Was it a lab accident, some attempt to improve music gone wrong? Or was there a run-in with one of those cosmic entities?"

"Well, I did have a run-in with Galactus," Dazzler laughed. "But no, Darcy, I was born this way."

There was a brief moment when the woman's expression was dumbfounded, as she processed what Dazzler said. But when it clicked inside her head, Darcy's face became a mask of fear and hate. Stumbling back from Dazzler, Darcy frantically reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.

"Mutie!"

"Well duh," said Dazzler. Though the recent lightshow had taken a lot of her, she still had enough to knock the gun away with a solid photon blast. "I'm like the most famous mutant in the world."

Facing Dazzler unarmed, Darcy's eyes briefly darted to the fallen gun. But evidently her flight instinct kicked in, and she raced up the stairs. Dazzler and Paul could hear her fleeing the house, still screaming that m-word.

"Boy, Paul, you really know how to pick them," sighed Dazzler. "And to think, I kind of liked her."

"I'm sorry, Alison. I had no idea."

"Well, it's not like they wear signs." Putting her arm about Paul's shoulder, Dazzler walked with him up the stairs. "Let me tell you about this girl I know. Kitty used to have this big crush on a boy, like first love…"

THE END

* * *

" **Resurrectionary"**

Featuring Cypher and Havok

Written by D. Golightly

* * *

"I don't understand."

Alex Summers sighed, not in aggravation, but because of his own uncertainty. He ran a hand through his hair, pausing at the back of his neck to place pressure against it in anticipation of a building headache. He looked down at the younger man sitting before him, the one who had spoken, the one who was obviously confused and scared.

"I know, Doug," Havok replied. "I don't really understand much of this either. I was surprised to see you in SHIELD custody. I'm still trying to get up to speed myself here."

"You're lying," Doug Ramsey shot back. "Tell me the truth!"

Havok was surprised at the outburst. Havok's paper-thin story wouldn't have been believeable to a kindergartener. What snake oil was he trying to sell this former X-Man, anyway? As a liason between SHIELD and the mutant community, Alex often found himself spouting polictial jargon that he didn't actually believe himself. This little-white-lie stuff was more in Scott's realm of expertise.

They were locked into a black room, devoid of decoration or anything else, save for a table and two chairs. It was a bare-bones interrogation room and no amount of sweet talk was going to turn it into anything else.

After taking in a deep breath, and holding it in, Alex finally released his neck and said, "Screw it."

With a quick wave of his hand he sent a pulse of plasma into the corner of the room, exploding the pivoting camera mounted there that had been monitoring their conversation. Doug sat back in his chair, but his face didn't reveal any sense of fear from Havok's sudden strike. It was almost as if he had expected him to do what he did.

"Doug," Havok began slowly, "tell me what you remember?"

"I remember dying. I remember a bright light. That's what you want to hear, right? Sure, I saw all that standard stuff. But I also remember Warlock telling me everything was going to be okay. The next thing I know I'm getting arrested, you're pretending that you're in the dark, and I'm getting pissed. Now. Tell me. What. The hell. Is happening to me!"

"It's pretty complicated-"

"I can read your body language, Alex," Doug blurted out. "You're uncomfortable, but confident in your expression. I can see the words while they're spilling out of your mouth. Most are distorted, but I can recognize the half-truths mixed into the jumble. You can keep trying to ease me into whatever it is you're eventually going to tell me, but since you just blew up your boss' eyeball into our little room, I'm thinking we only have a few seconds before they kick in the door. So, cut the crap and start giving it to me straight, dammit!"

"...you can see my words?"

Doug nodded.

Doug Ramsey had once been know as Cypher, an omnilingualist, whose mutant power allowed him to comprehend language in any form. He had been an expert in computer sciences since he could understand computer code like no one else could. He had been a valuable member of the X-Men and the New Mutants before he died.

Then a week ago he had turned up randomly at a library, pulling hundreds of texts off the shelves so he could feel the pages. The police had thought him homeless and crazy, but SHIELD's facial recognition software flagged him as a person of interest and he was transferred to a secure facility. Havok was brought in to try and better assess the situation, evaluate Doug, and make a recommendation on how to proceed. It wasn't everyday that a long-dead mutant popped back up on the radar.

Reading body language, seeing words...this was obviously not the same Doug Ramsey.

Havok hesitated a second further before saying, "An hour ago I was shown footage of you climbing out of your grave."

Doug's jaw dropped open, but he quickly recomposed himself. "Okay...so, I was dead and now I'm back. That happens, right? I mean, to us. To mutants. Hell, to people in general, right? Didn't Thor die once? And he's a god or something, so-"

"Not too long ago a would-be world-changer calling herself Wicked attempted to ressurect scores of mutants that had been killed in a horrific event called the Hecatomb. She succeeded." *

 _[* Check out X-Men: The Lazarus Contract, but that pretty much sums it all up.]_

"But I wasn't part of this Hecatomb thing," Doug protested. They heard footsteps coming down the hallway. They weren't rushed, but it sounded like several pairs of feet was heading for them. "What does this Wicked person have to do with me?"

"She was manipulated into generating this worldwide event that some have referred to as a Ressurection Wave," Havok explained. "She didn't just bring back the mutants that were killed in the Hecatomb. Countless scores of mutants have been rising from their graves all across the globe. Your cemetary was being monitored since several deceased X-Men were buried there. It's not a big stretch of the imagination that our enemies would desecrate our final resting places, right?"

"I died."

It was Havok's turn to nod. Then, after a brief pause, Havok asked, "What were you doing in the library, Doug? They said you were running your fingers over the books but not actually reading them."

"I _was_ reading them. Just not cognitively. I could feel the language contained inside. I intuitively understood the contents by touching the pages. I...couldn't do that before."

"It seems like a whole lot has changed for you." Havok pointed under the table where Doug. "Like that."

Doug glanced down at his right leg, which wasn't entirely organic any longer. Instead of a flesh and blood limb he was staring at a metallic, techno-organic appendage. He could feel his thigh, calf, and foot just like they were an extensive of himself, but when he tapped on the metal skin it clanged hard as a rock.

"Yeah," Doug muttered. "I don't get it either. Was I...was I buried with an artifical leg?"

"No."

Someone pounded on the door, demanding to me let in. The doorknob shoook violently as whoever was on the other side attempted to force the lock to undo itself. Havok glanced at the door and then turned back to look at Doug again.

"Doug, I want to help you," Alex said. "You believe that, right?"

Doug's mutant ability translated Havok's body language and other nonverbal cues into a logical understanding that seemed obvious to the resurrected man. He saw the verbal language flow out of Havok like a translucent encoded transmission, recognizing the authenticity of the intent behind it.

"Yes, I believe you."

"Then let me. I promise you we'll figure this out."

A final warning that the door would be broken down prompted Havok to simply reach back and unlock the handle, letting the SHIELD agents into the room. He matched stares with Doug as the blue-suited agents stepped in to surround them, and despite the tension Doug still found himself trusting his fellow mutant.

* * *

FOLLOW THIS UNFOLDING MYSTERY IN THE PAGES OF THE UPCOMING M2K SERIES

 **X-FACTOR**


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